Compatriots, the underground national democratic revolutionary mass organization of overseas Filipinos and their families, is daring the Duterte government to genuinely address the roots of the armed conflict by pushing forward the peace talks and to proceed with finalizing the Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-Economic Reforms (CASER) with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), and reject the militarists and fascists who want the peace talks to fail.

Compatriots, one of the 18-member organizations in the NDFP, said the recent rants of GRP President Duterte against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA) and the ongoing peace talks do not push forward the peace process to address poverty, unemployment, hunger and landlessness in the country, and instead only give the fascist Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and right-wing politicians the go-signal to continue their war against the Filipino people. These problems and the AFP’s military operations under their ‘counterinsurgency’ war are the things that continue to terrorize the Filipino people, said Compatriots.

Migrant Filipinos are the products of poverty, hunger, unemployment and landlessness in the Philippines, Compatriots avers. As such, they have an interest and stake in the peace process, particularly in the prospects of crafting an agreement on socio-economic reforms which will promote genuine rural development, implement genuine land reform and national industrialization, Compatriots said.

Socio-economic reforms that address landlessness and unemployment would be a key solution for the millions of hungry and jobless Filipinos from seeking employment and security abroad, Compatriots explained.

Compatriots stressed that if Duterte really wants to solve the phenomenon of forced migration and arrest the exodus of an average of more than 5,000 Filipinos who leave the Philippines daily, he should firmly pursue peace talks with the revolutionary movement and build on the gains already achieved from the last three rounds of talks.

During the third round of talks held in Rome, Italy, many Filipino migrants expressed the hope that an agreement on socio-economic reforms in the ongoing peace talks and its eventual implementation would be a big step towards realizing the aspirations of overseas Filipinos to go home to a better and more developed Philippines.#